Chimpanzee contains more images of bug eating than five full seasons of Survivor. Yum. You want fries with that? No? Well how about one of those green fruit that you mash into paste and suck on to the delight of ill-mannered children? Oh, sure, you got those in spades. Great.
Meet baby Oscar. Big-eyed and scrawny, he’s cute, and has just a wisp of the white whiskered-beard that may or may not determine the age of these apes. His mom is Ishi and her naming skills went as far as the Academy Awards … and no farther. Chimp life is simple – you hammer a few nuts, you swing on a few vines, you eat a few bugs off your neighbor. You struggle to find non-bug nourishment. Watching the chimps hunt and kill a fellow primate (Colobus Monkey) for food – well that just seems wrong, doesn’t it? Like when humans eat monkey brains. And then after the hunting you go to war with other tribes of chimpanzees over the limited local resources. We’ll get to that later. First we have Tim Allen!
Tim Allen narrates the journey through Chimptown; he’s no Morgan Freeman (who is?), but he doesn’t try to be, either. His playful tone too often falls back on a Home Improvement shtick, especially with the abundant number of simple tool 
scenes. The tone he sets is a striking contrast juxtaposed with the seriousness to follow – Oscar becomes an orphan during our time with him. Hard to say if that’s a bad thing (the tone, that is) — do you want a Grim Reaper monologue for a G movie about chimps? How about a child losing a parent in a G film? I suppose Disney’s done it before.
Speaking of things Disney’s already done — The leader of the bad chimps is named “Scar.” Really? Really? It’s a documentary; you can name the chimp anything from “Cassius Clay” to “Puddin’tane.” Did you run out of space on your little Disney Villain Naming Wheel?
We got a hero; we got a villain; now all we need is some confused fighting and a narrated conclusion telling us what we saw. I would have preferred the jungle news to Tim Allen, but of course this skirmish went unreported, like so much black-on-black violence. *sigh*
Chimpanzee isn’t wonderful, but it’s a huge improvement over the last Earth Day bit of recycling, African Cats. Chimps are more compelling than cats. There’s also some fantastic cinematography here involving stop motion and time lapse techniques. It almost makes you feel like you’re right there … watching Planet Earth in HDTV on the Discover Channel.
Rated G, 78 Minutes
D: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield
W: God, or Charles Darwin, depending on your perspective
Genre: Mirth display on Earth’s Day
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Orphans
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: “I hate every monkey I can see/from chimpan-A to chimpanzee”
